While we go by the titles of digital marketer, graphic designer and copywriter by day, by night we like to don a beige boiler suit and bust those industry myths!

Who said email marketing is old news? Or that all you need is a good website? The myth busting team is here to go through the top 10 digital marketing myths we’ve heard of so far.

1. Digital Marketing Is Only For Big Fancy Businesses

The one we hear the most is that only big, multi-million pound companies use digital marketing. While even the biggest organisation will invest big bucks into their digital marketing efforts, it is just as important for smaller businesses.

You don’t even need the big business budget to get started, and you’ll soon get a fantastic ROI once your target audience is reached and sales or leads start pouring in.

2. Digital Marketing Isn’t a Priority Right Now

Says who? We know that in the current economic climate everyone is cutting back on luxuries, but digital marketing is an essential, not an unnecessary extra.

Without a solid online reputation, a business has no foundation to build upwards from. Your potential clients will be online, searching for your product and service but it could be hidden behind your competition’s optimised online content and marketing.

After all, online credibility is the equivalent of the traditional word-of-mouth. As they say, you’ve got to spend money to make money. You’ve got to prioritise digital marketing if you want to grow your business.

3. A Business Website Alone Is Enough to Attract Customers

Some people think you can build a website and customers will come. Sadly, it’s not as easy as that for your target audience to find you!

Obviously, a well-designed and navigable website helps! But to send customers in the right direction, businesses need to work on their SEO, email automation, paid social ads and Google ads… to name a few! Once your visitors have found their way to your website, then you can wow them with how awesome it is.

4. Just Copy What the Competition is Doing

Why not take the easy route and just do what everyone else is doing? Well, not only will it be glaringly obvious what you’re doing, but sometimes it pays off to be different.

If your main competitor is only advertising offline, make the most of the advantage of being first to access the huge online market. Use avenues or themes that haven’t been done a million times before. Stand out from the flock.

5. Email Marketing Isn’t Effective Anymore

Email marketing is dead, they said. It isn’t though. It’s actually one of the most effective digital marketing methods we use. Not only does it build a relationship with existing customers, automated emails are personalised and accurately targeted, offering a smart way to promote your business.

6. Social Media Is Only For B2C Businesses

Social media is for Gen Z and B2C businesses, right? Wrong. In reality, most Gen Xers are on social media and even boomers spend a few hours a day on social media every day.

Even if you’re not selling directly via social media, most people will research a brand online and those without a consistent social media presence don’t look legit. Social media is great for reaching a wide range of people while building your brand reputation.

7. Quantity Is More Important Than Quality

Keywords, blogs, just chuck out as many as you can to rank on Google. If only. Then we’d all be using AI to churn out masses of content for us while we sit back and relax.

Google is smart, not only does it know when copy has been AI generated, sending it lower down the ranks, but it also decides which content is worth its time based on quality. This means content that is valuable, that has not been overfilled with keywords and offers something unique and interesting.

Not only for Google’s sake, but for your readers’ sake, make your content good. People will be much more likely to read it.

8. Mobile Optimisation Isn’t Important

After you’ve spent all that time on your website, what’s the point in spending more effort into optimising it for mobile use? You’ll soon change your mind when you realise that most web traffic comes from mobiles.  

If your website has not been designed with mobiles in mind as well, your mobile readers are likely to get fed up and click away.

9. AI Can Just Do It All For Me

We’ve already mentioned in point 7 why Google may not rank AI generated content. As well as that though, AI still needs human direction and lacks human creativity or original thinking.

However, AI can be handy for checking your work and speeding up some processes. Don’t rely on it to take care of your entire digital marketing strategy though!

10. Personalisation Is Creepy

Finishing with a corker: personalisation is creepy! With GDPR and privacy policies, there is plenty of protection for people who are worried. You can even unsubscribe to emails if you don’t like that they use your name or know certain information about you.

The truth is though, that the majority of customers appreciate feeling valued and prefer an email address directly to them rather than to generic customer number X. Tailored and personalised marketing is the new norm.

Make the Smart Move

Have we convinced you yet? Digital marketing is kind of a big deal for any business, big or small. Want to fight about it? We love a debate, give us a call!

If you’ve got big dreams for your business, a new product you want to promote or are simply looking to grow upwards and onwards, we are here to help with that. We’re not too sheepish to admit we’re really darn good at what we do.